Stress may be as harmful as junk food: study

Live TV

Stress can affect the gut microbes, causing as much harm to our bodies as junk food, a study has warned.

Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the study found that when female mice were exposed to stress, their gut microbiota - the microorganisms vital to digestive and metabolic health - changed to look like the mice had been eating a high-fat diet.

"Stress can be harmful in a lot of ways, but this research is novel in that it ties stress to female-specific changes in the gut microbiota," said Laura Bridgewater, professor at Brigham Young University in the US. "We sometimes think of stress as a purely psychological phenomenon, but it causes distinct physical changes," Bridgewater said.

Researchers took a large group of eight-week-old mice and exposed half of the males and half of the females to a high- fat diet. After 16 weeks, all of the mice were exposed to mild stress over the course of 18 days. The team then extracted microbial DNA from the mice fecal pellets before and after the stress to test how the gut microbiota was affected. Researchers also measured mouse anxiety based on how much and where the mice travelled in an open field arena.

They found that male mice on the high-fat diet exhibited more anxiety than females on the high-fat diet, and high-fat males also showed decreased activity in response to stress. However, it was only in female mice that stress caused the gut microbiota composition to shift as if the animals were on a high-fat diet, researchers said. While the study was only carried out on animals, researchers believe there are could be significant implications for humans.

"In society, women tend to have higher rates of depression and anxiety, which are linked to stress. This study suggests that a possible source of the gender discrepancy may be the different ways gut microbiota responds to stress in males vs females," Bridgewater said.